Increased Voter Turnout Could Benefit Republicans Or Democrats In 2020

Poll of the Week

Most polls survey people who are either registered — or at least likely — to vote, but a new Knight Foundation poll interviewed over 12,000 people who don’t vote.

These are people who are eligible but not registered to vote, or who are registered but rarely vote. Nonvoters make up a sizable percentage of the eligible voting-age population, too — about 100 million people, or 43 percent. But they’re kind of a mystery. We know a fair bit about these nonvoters demographically — they’re young, less educated and a bit poorer than the electorate — but they could be hugely influential if they actually turned out. After all, the share of voters who didn’t vote in 2016 was larger than the share of voters that voted for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

It’s not entirely clear, though, which party would benefit if they did vote in 2020. “Conventional wisdom has been that if all nonvoters turned up to vote there would be an overwhelming win for the Democratic Party,” said Evette Alexander, a director at the Knight Foundation who participated in the survey design. “But I think what we’re seeing in the survey is that both parties can and should try to engage. There is room for both parties to engage nonvoters and to both have turnout increase.” Here are some insights into who these nonvoters are:

1. Nonvoters are less white, less educated, poorer, younger and more likely to be women than those who do vote. So based on demographics alone, nonvoters sound like a large pool of potential Democratic voters, as Democrats tend to skew younger and more racially diverse than Republicans. But this doesn’t account for how the makeup of nonvoters can vary pretty dramatically from state to state. A New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll conducted in six battleground states last fall found, for instance, that less educated white voters were overrepresented among nonvoters in battleground states and were more likely to vote for Trump. The Times also found in that survey that while black voters are a huge source of support for Democrats, those who hadn’t voted in recent elections weren’t necessarily likely to vote Democratic. The Knight Foundation survey provided further evidence that Democrats may not hold an edge in reaching nonvoters, as it found that factors like education and income were more important in predicting whether someone was a nonvoter than factors like race and gender, and those factors worked in Trump’s favor in the last presidential election.

2. Nonvoters lean slightly Democratic overall, but they favor President Trump in some key states. The poll also asked nonvoters who they would vote for if they were to vote, and found they were almost evenly split — 33 percent say they would vote for the Democratic nominee, 30 percent say they would vote for Trump and 18 percent say they would vote for someone else. However, this breakdown varied quite a bit in battleground states, which Knight sampled heavily. Nevada’s “chronic nonvoters,”1 for example, split evenly, but those in Pennsylvania and Florida skewed heavily toward Trump while those in Georgia would skew Democratic if they all voted.

Nonvoters lean toward Trump in some key states

Vote preference for nonvoters (people eligible to vote but are not registered, and those who are registered but have voted only once in the last six national elections)

State

President Trump

Democratic Nominee

Lean

Alabama

34%

25%

R+9

Pennsylvania

36

28

R+8

Florida

36

31

R+5

Virginia

35

31

R+4

New Hampshire

30

29

R+1

Minnesota

29

29

0

Nevada

33

33

0

Michigan

31

32

D+1

Wisconsin

31

33

D+2

Georgia

29

34

D+5

The survey did not distinguish between nonvoters who plan to vote in the 2020 general election and those who do not.

Source: Knight Foundation

3. It’s possible that some of these nonvoters will vote in 2020. A large majority of nonvoters (71 percent) say they plan to vote in 2020, and 55 percent express “absolute certainty” that they will vote this year. Of course, even though enthusiasm is relatively high in 2020, that doesn’t mean everyone who says they’re interested in voting will ultimately cast a ballot. Alexander told FiveThirtyEight that the question was intended only to measure enthusiasm, not to predict turnout. She explained that most nonvoters were probably still unlikely to turn out, but the fact that so many expressed an interest shows that there is a group — especially among those who follow news more closely, are more educated and have higher incomes — that could be persuaded.

4. Many nonvoters say the main reason they don’t vote is because they feel disengaged. While some chronic nonvoters could turn out, the Knight Foundation poll also asked an open-ended question about why nonvoters choose not to vote. The two most common responses were nonvoters don’t like the candidates (17 percent) or they think their vote doesn’t matter (12 percent). Among those who are not registered to vote, a plurality (29 percent) said that they’re simply not interested or don’t care. Reaching nonvoters could be difficult as well. Seventy-three percent of voters said they actively seek out news and information, while only 56 percent of nonvoters said so. The rest said that they “mostly bump into news and information as [they] do other things or hear about it from others.”

The results of the poll indicate that an overall increase in turnout may not be an overwhelming benefit to either side, but either Trump or the Democratic nominee could benefit from finding ways to activate the nonvoters who are more likely to vote for them. Activating nonvoters could be a difficult and expensive venture for campaigns, though, and many nonvoters may still ultimately not turn out, but if 2020 is an especially close election, who doesn’t turn out could matter a whole lot. If both parties work to reach disengaged Americans and convince people that their vote matters, that would be a “win for democracy,” said Alexander.

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Trump Approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 44.0 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 51.5 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -7.5 points). At this time last week, 43.9 percent approved and 51.8 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -7.9 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 41.9 percent and a disapproval rating of 53.9 percent, for a net approval rating of -12.0 points.

Generic Ballot

In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot, Democrats currently lead by 6.4 percentage points (47.7 percent to 41.3 percent). A week ago, Democrats led Republicans by 5.7 points (47.2 percent to 41.5 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats by 5.7 points (46.9 percent to 41.2 percent).

Footnotes

Defined in the report as registered voters who participated in zero or one of the last six presidential or midterm elections between November 2008 and November 2018.

Dhrumil Mehta is a database journalist at FiveThirtyEight focusing on politics. @DataDhrumil